Summary: Ever wonder just how Rodney ended up with the posting to Antarctica? Bet ya Sam's got a pretty good idea how…
Disclaimer: Yadda yadda not mine. Just having fun. Don't sue me, I'm behind on rent and I buy coffee with pennies.
Author's Note: Set at the beginning of SG1 Season 8, after "New World Order" but before "Containment" and Atlantis: "Rising". Slight spoilers for "New World Order", "Redemption" and that first episode with Rodney that I can't remember the name of.
This is my first fanfic in a long time. I've been trying to concentrate more on some original stuff, but I've got Atlantis on the brain, and it needs to go away before I can concentrate again. Reviews are lovely, be as brutal as you like, I can take it.
With the calm patience of a chronic insomniac, Lt. Colonel Samantha Carter (hot damn, she was a colonel now, wasn't she? Holy Hannah) watched as her second pot of coffee of the night sat brewing on the nearest unused surface. Drip by drip the pot filled like…like…well, she couldn't think of a metaphor, but she was sure there was some Ancient mojo saying that would fit perfectly.
Ancient…mojo? Did she really just think that?
Yes. Yes, she did. O'Neill was getting to her.
Well, said an amused voice in the back of her head, was there ever a time he didn't?
Sam very quickly told that voice to shut the hell up, she shouldn't be thinking about a superior officer – much less a man who now held the rank of Brigadier General – like that. Nodding to herself in confirmation, she then began shuffling the folders on her desk for distraction.
Her fingers brushed an old, slightly yellowing manila folder. Good Lord, how long had that one been sitting there? She never had time to type up anything but mission reports anymore, and the result was a plethora of old projects, academic papers, and theory casework that had begun a hostile takeover of her office and lab.
…which was now beginning to slide off the shelf above the desk and onto her head. Son of a -
And after all she had faced as a member of SG1, to think she would be taken out of action by an avalanche of paperwork. Not exactly Purple Heart material there, was it?
With all the grace and practiced reflexes that life on the run from the Goa'uld had bred, she managed to stem the tide and tuck all her old files back in place on the shelf. They really belonged in the file cabinet, but Sam was afraid that if they got filed, she'd forget and never finish any of them. Out of sight, out of mind.
She flipped open the current file she was holding. The title hadn't rung any bells, but now that she glanced through it, she could see it was an earlier version of her plan to protect the stargate from another frequency weapon attack like the one Baal had used against them two years ago. Setting it down, she reached over and poured herself a cup of fresh coffee.
Blowing across the surface of the hot liquid, she cupped her hands around the black ceramic and scanned the first page. She could remember very vividly the month spent on this particular project, like some kind of trauma victim with images of horror and carnage burnt into their brains.
Okay, so maybe it hadn't been that bad. But between grieving for Daniel, breaking in Jonas, and trying like hell to still fit in with SG1 when both Teal'c and O'Neill had both withdrawn into themselves and left her to deal with her grief alone. She wasn't very good at grief management, she never had been. And they, the two people she had need most had just…
Well, she sighed. Apparently she still had some unresolved issues about that year.
But to top it all off, Hell Month – as she had taken to calling it – had involved the almost constant presence of one Dr. Rodney McKay, theoretical physicist and universal pain in the ass. True, they had been on much better terms after that little completely uninvited heart-to-not-so-much-heart in the infirmary, but still…she defied Mother Teresa to have dealt with Rodney McKay for longer than two minutes without resorting a four letter word.
Differences and irritations aside, they had worked together relatively well and come up with a viable solution for blocking the certain energy frequencies Baal's weapon had used, and all without disabling anyting essential to the gate. And to be completely fair, it had been Rodney's idea to install a little program that would flip the frequency around, amplify it, and launch it right back at the attacking gate.
But, she reflected, it was her equations that made it work when Rodney's fell short. He'd since taken up an intense study of the Ancients' system of Base Eight mathematics and was almost as proficient as Carter. Almost.
She had made that little clarification at lunch one day with the aid of a bottle of lemon extract, which had been judiciously squirted over McKay's plate of salisbury steak. Sam had rationalized later that it really wasn't as cruel as Rodney made it sound. O'Neill had piped up in her defense and reasoned that McKay should thank Carter for having saved him from the bowel-disrupting nightmare (O'Neill's phrase, not hers) that was the SGC's salisbury steak lunch.
The phone in her office rang from somewhere in the vicinity of the coffee maker. She straightened the smirk off her face and set down the folder as she reached to answer it. "This is Carter," she said.
"Sam? You are an evil, vile woman, and if I believed in Hell you would be going there instead of sending me in your place."
Oh, son of a –
"McKay!"
"Who else? Are you sending any other poor wayward men to their deaths, hm? Maybe locking someone else up in Alaska for some strange, beguiling feminine reason?" The voice on the other end of the line sniffed in disdain. "We both know you only recommended me to Dr. Weir because you're afraid of what could happen between us. Is this how you deal with all the men you're afraid to admit you're attracted to?"
She paused for a moment, her mouth hanging open. Of all the weird things to happen…she vaguely recalled reading a paper by a quantum physicist out of M.I.T that had theorized that on a quantum scale, there were no such thing as coincidences.
"Should I take your silence as a 'yes'? Or does it mean that you're rethinking shipping me off to Antarctica since you realize we'll be separated for such a long time, and you realize how difficult the distance will be for you?. The torch you're carrying for me is all to obvious, Major, and I for one– "
"Colonel," she managed to say.
"Excuse me?" he asked.
"Lt. Colonel, Rodney. I got promoted," Sam said, recovering from her initial shock. Not the best voice in the world to be surprised with at one in the morning.
"You did?"
"Yes."
"Oh. Congratulations. I didn't know they were promoting people for being minions of Satan," he drawled.
"I thought you didn't believe in that stuff," she paused to sip her coffee, "and do you know what time it is here?"
"If for some impossible reason I'm wrong and Satan actually exists you, my not-friend, are his minion. And of course I know what time it is. I knew you'd be awake. Unless I woke you up, in which case…are you wearing slinky pajamas? Because I should know if you're wearing slinky pajamas, that's…that's definitely information you need to share with the man you've sentenced to an icy cold death in Antarctica."
"Rodney, this is my work number. I think they'd frown on slinky pajamas here. And you usually are wrong, by the way," she answered.
"Wait…" she could hear the sound of him sipping something, most likely coffee – he was the only person she knew to be a bigger caffeine addict than herself, "so by asserting that I'm always wrong, you're admitting that you are, in fact, a minion of Satan? And that previous statement seemed to indicate that you might actually own slinky pajamas. Are they silk? And/or pink? I prefer pink on blondes."
Okay, that was enough. "Rodney, do you want me to send Felgar down to Antarctica with you?"
There was dead silence. Then, "…you wouldn't."
"One more comment about my sleepwear, slinky or non, so help me I will send Felgar down to be your personal assistant."
Last year, as a Christmas present, Rodney had mailed her a book entitled Why Blondes Have More Fun, but had penciled in the word Smart in between Why and Blondes. To show her appreciation, Sam had temporarily reassigned Dr. Felgar from the SGC to Area51 to assist McKay in his research into crystal-based computer networks.
Felgar had come back to the SGC unable to form coherent sentences for two whole weeks, much to O'Neill's delight. Felgar had also been accompanied by a sealed note that read "Please, Major, you insult me. Knight to Queen Four." But despite his gloating, Sam knew that Felgar's innate knack to annoy the crap out of people and cause natural disasters in his wake had gotten under Rodney's skin. McKay liked to annoy people, not be annoyed by them.
"Is sentencing me to my death not enough? You have to send along the man who - on his first day in my lab - managed to somehow drop an orange slice into my coffee and forgot to tell me about it?" McKay paused, and Sam could hear a metal clink, presumably Rodney adding more sugar and milk to his coffee. He drank it at near-syrup consistency.
"I didn't put him up to that."
Another pause. "I wasn't suggesting that you had, but you said that awful quickly."
Sam stifled a yawn. "Rodney, answer me honestly, are you happy working in Nevada?"
"'Happy' is not a relevant term. I'm content in my work," he answered.
"Rodney…"
"Are you offering me a place at the SGC?" he asked.
"Not a snowball's chance in hell," she answered.
McKay sighed. "Then, yes, Colonel Carter, I'm…happy…in Nevada."
Carter stared into her empty coffee mug. She knew he was lying, but there was also a tone to his voice that – No. No way in hell was she going to start feeling sorry for Rodney McKay. Tolerance was fine, but there would be no sympathy.
She refilled her mug. "Rodney, listen. I'm only going to say this once, and if you read too much into this, I really will sentence you to eternity trapped in ice with Felgar."
"What?" Damn, he was getting snappish. That was never good.
Sam took a breath and let it out slowly. "McKay, this isn't some kind of academic rivalry like what you may have experienced wherever it was you taught –"
"Columbia."
"Right. This isn't that. It's not about ego, or pride, or anything else personal. This outpost we've discovered, though it's in Antarctica, is quite possibly the single most important place on Earth aside from the SGC. Frankly, I wish I could be down there poking through all the Ancient technology that we've uncovered so far…maybe even figuring out the mechanics of how the command chair works in the first place…"
"Obviously some kind of neural interface," he interjected, the wounded tone to his voice disappearing, "perhaps with a – "
"Yeah, I know, anyway," she cut in firmly. "I can't be down there. I have responsibilities here, loyalties and friendships and things I just can't leave behind, no matter how fascinating and ground-breaking the discoveries in Antarctica might be. And though it's been hard, frustrating, heart-breaking, and maddening at times, my work here has also been the most fulfilling experience I've ever had. I've been happy here, Rodney, happier than I ever thought I could be."
There was a long silence. "So," he said slowly, "because you're happy and content that means no one else can be?"
"That's not what I meant."
"Then what?"
Sam rolled her eyes to the ceiling. That man could be more infuriating than…than…well, she couldn't think of a good example, but he was utterly frustrating. "I'm happy here, McKay, because I've been a firsthand witness to some of the most amazing discoveries mankind has made, and I've been a part – a primary part - of the most important endeavor on Earth. This base in Antarctica holds the world's most advanced technology, and not only is it the primary defense of our planet, it also holds to the clues to our origins, Rodney," excitement started to creep into her voice as she continued, "I mean, we're talking about the Ancients! The guys who build the stargates in the first place, the race that created all other human life in our galaxy, possibly the greatest and most advanced race to ever –"
"Okay, okay, I get what you're saying. Antarctica is important, I'm not being shuffled into some second-rate hole in the ground," he sighed.
She resisted to smack the phone receiver into the desk a few times. What she really wanted to smack around was McKay himself, and the phone would just be a pale second. "I'm offering you a chance to be more than just content with your work."
"Let me guess: you're offering me happiness?" Again with the disdain. What was it with this guy?
Sam sat back in her chair, resigned. "That was the general idea of the speech, yes."
"Happiness is a myth, Colonel," he said firmly. "An illusion of the moment."
She paused, taken aback. McKay didn't really think that, did he? She knew he could be almost morose at times, but this was taking it a bit far. Sam was still considering what to say next when he finally spoke up again.
"Unless," he continued, "we're talking about you in slinky pink pajamas…maybe one of those tank top two-pieces things like in the Victoria's Secret commericals?"
Yeah. Good old McKay. Suddenly Antarctica didn't seem like far enough away. Maybe another galaxy… Sam was sure she could work something out with the Asgard.
"Felgar," she said.
"Evil wench," he answered.
"Witches have warts, in which case I think slinky pjs are out of the question."
"I said 'wench' not 'witch'," he corrected, "which would imply not only slinky clothing, but also the possibility of leather corsets and pirate costumes."
"Ah, but I'm evil, remember?"
"Evil, yes. But still hot," he added.
It was only a downward spiral from there. "So you'll go to Antarctica?"
"Yes, yes, yes," he answered. "I've already talked to Dr. Weir and finalized my travel arrangements."
Sam blinked. "Then why –"
"I just wanted you to know that I know who's really behind Dr. Weir's invitation. She wouldn't have approached any physicists without a recommendation from you."
"So," she said slowly, "you called to…what?"
"Complain and generally waste your time," he said, obviously pleased with himself. "Oh, and to ascertain whether or not you owned any sexy pajamas. See, I have this theory about blondes, whether smart or not that they all –"
That little rat-bastard, she thought, her brain automatically digging up another O'Neill-ism. "Rodney?" she said, in her sweetest voice.
"Yes?"
"I'm sending Felgar's file to Weir as we speak. He'll join you at the outpost as soon as he's finished with his current project."
"Nice try, but you won't get him to uproot and join any more projects with me, I made sure of that last time," he said smugly. "Unless you've got some unplayed card, which I highly doubt."
"He likes blondes, too," she stated.
"Shit," Rodney said.
"Don't worry," she said, "I'll make sure he doesn't bring any oranges with him."
"Well, that's good to –"
"Lemons, though," she said, "That's a whole other ballgame. Goodbye, Rodney. And, by the way, don't eat the snowcones."